A STUDY ON JUDICIAL TRENDS ON PROTECTION OF CONSUMER RIGHTS IN GUJARAT

Abstract

A consumer or a customer is a person who buys goods or hires services with money, i.e., a price is fixed on the purchase of a commodity or hiring a service for a service provider. Consumer pays a price for the commodity he buys or the service he receives. The problem arises when he finds that the good he gets in exchange of a price suffers from defects or it is a low quality product. This certainly makes him a loss-monetary as well as mental.

In order to understand the spirit of the legislation, one should necessarily study the objectives of Consumer Protection Act in India. While introducing Consumer Protection Bill into the Parliament the Parliament members of the Parliament were briefed about the intention of introducing the Bill, which is as follows. Indian market is dominated by the consumerism. It has been transformed from sellers' market into buyers' market. In this sort of market exercised choice by the consumers depends on their awareness level. Consumer rights could be protected in a competitive economy only when right standards for goods and services for which one makes payment are ensured by evolving a network of institutions and legal protection system. Ensuring consumer welfare is the responsibility of the Government as every citizen of the country is a consumer in one way or the other.

Consumers, clients or customers world over, are demanding value for money in the form of quality goods and better services. Modern technological developments have no doubt made a great impact on the quality, availability, and safety of goods and services. But the fact is that consumers are still victims of unscrupulous and exploitative practices. Exploitation of consumers takes different forms such as adulteration of food, spurious drugs, dubious hire purchase plans, high prices, poor quality, deficient services, defective advertisements, hazardous products, black marketing and many more. It has been realized that the consumer protection is a socio-economic programme to be pursued by the government as well as the business as the satisfaction of the consumers is in the interest of both. In this study we would like to investigate the government policies relating to protect the interest of the consumers and their rights. In this context, we would thoroughly analyse the policy easures, legal structure and administrative framework. We are also interested to examine some of the case studies related to consumer disputes settled in the Consumer Disputes Redressal Forums under three-tier system.